The present invention relates to telephony and in particular to an audio conferencing platform.
Audio conferencing platforms are known. For example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,483,588 and 5,495,522. Audio conferencing platforms allow conference participants to easily schedule and conduct audio conferences with a large number of users. In addition, audio conference platforms are generally capable of simultaneously supporting many conferences.
A problem with existing audio conference platforms is that they employ a fixed threshold to determine whether a conference participant is speaking. Using such a fixed threshold may result in a conference participant being added to the summed conference audio, even though they are not speaking. Specifically, if the background audio noise is high (e.g., the user is on a factory floor), then the amount of digitized audio energy associated with that conference participant may be sufficient for the conference platform to falsely detect speech, and add the background noise to the conference sum under the mistaken belief that the energy is associated with speech.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that accounts for background noise in the detection of valid conference speakers.